08:00 PM : Benefit for the CCC @ Acme

Fundraiser Flyered by kmikeym

Friday, November 3th @ Acme
Blackbird & the Portland Mercury proudly present:
A Benefit for the Community Cycling Center with:
Alan Singley & The Pants Machine 
Boy Eats Drum Machine 
Please Step Out of the Vehicle 
DJ BJ (after-show dance party!)
(21 & Over)
8 pm doors, show at 9
$5-$10 sliding scale

Blackbird and the Portland Mercury are exceptionally honored to host a benefit for Portland's Community Cycling Center. Proceeds help hundreds of underprivileged kids in Portland get their first bike.

The CCC: The Community Cycling Center provides year-round programs for low-income youth and adults, serving more than 1,500 community members each year. Participants learn bike safety and maintenance and earn their own bicycles, locks and helmets.
The Community Cycling Center also operates a full-service retail bike shop that is open to the public and sells refurbished bicycles. Bicycles and parts are donated from individuals, institutions and supporting businesses. Volunteers, bicycle donations and financial contributions have made the Community Cycling Center the largest bicycle recycling organization in the US. 

Holiday Bike Drive 2006: The Holiday Bike Drive is the Community Cycling Center's largest event of the year. They distribute refurbished bikes and new helmets to deserving children for the holidays. This year will give 600 kids refurbished bikes and new helmets. The CCC partners with schools and family service organizations in the Portland and Vancouver areas to identify children with the greatest need.
The Community Cycling Center was founded in 1994 to build skills and foster the personal growth of youth through community-oriented recreational and educational bicycle programs and services. Sustainability, self-sufficiency, recycling/reusing, and safety are trademarks of all the programs and are central to the CCC's mission.

A BIKE TODAY, A CYCLIST FOR LIFE!!

Contact the CCC for information about bike donations or volunteering. 
Alison Hill 503-546-8864
www.CommunityCyclingCenter.org

The Music:

Alan Singley and the Pants Machine:
Alan Singley & Pants Machine's latest record Lovingkindness is, put simply, a sweet summer’s masterwork. Skipping from breezy midday-party songs to confessional depth and grace, Singley has, with this record, reinforced his position as one of the Northwest’s best kept secrets and most promising talents. “Water song” is a perfect example, and is so good it’s like a secret you wish you could keep in your pocket forever. For our money, though, no one’s summed up him and this record quite like the review below-

 “Alan Singley and Pants Machine , to put it lightly, is a different sort of musician. Unabashedly enthusiastic and unashamed of that enthusiasm, the pop songwriter seeks more than anything else to connect with an audience on an intimate level. Sometimes that effort is a little unsettling, as it was last week when he showed up at my front door with a copy of his new album, Lovingkindness, and asked, through the screen door, “Are you Casey Jaaaahman?” I told him yes, and added that I hadn’t expected his album to be hand-delivered. His gaze wandered from my door up to some clouds, rested a moment on a couple of trees and then landed back down on me. “We were just driving around,” he said. Singley has always made music that’s as goofy and full of wonder as he is. 

His songs are about love and nature, his voice well-rehearsed but still filled with a childlike unpredictability. Once in a while, Singley stumbles into a six-minute stint of wandering psychedelia or a quick and silly rock number, but the best work on his previous albums has also been the gentlest, with Singley’s fragile voice wrapped in piano and finger-picked guitar. It’s in those moments that one realizes Alan Singley was born in the wrong decade, his music resting comfortably between Smiley Smile-era Beach Boys or Village Green-era Kinks. Lovingkindness, Singley’s third release, is his first album with backing band Pants Machine. It’s also the first of Singley’s albums to be properly produced in a studio, by John Cohrs, Skyler Norwood (Point Juncture, WA) and Gus Elg (Wilding)...The machinery surrounding Singley not only helps him from straying into six-minute territory, it also wisely leaves him room to breathe on tracks like “Watersong,” a classic, multilayered pop ballad, and “Underneath,” wherein he sings with heartbreaking directness about an abusive father: “As we got older I started to think/ That underneath all the alcohol, the cocaine and the violence/ There was a man/ And I’m not saying it’s right but I understand.” 

This seriousness is something new for Singley, but you wouldn’t know it by the way he delivers those lines, keeping the heavy parts heavy, the funny parts funny, and the pretty parts absolutely gorgeous. Alan Singley might be Portland’s most eccentric songwriter. But he is also its most under-appreciated, and as Lovingkindness ultimately attests, one of its very finest.” 
-Casey Jarman, Willamette Week

Learn…
http://www.alansingley.com/
http://www.myspace.com/alansingley

Listen…
http://www.alansingley.com/music.html

Look…
http://www.alansingley.com/photos.html

Boy Eats Drum Machine…
Despite the greatness of the name Boy Eats Drum Machine, I have to let you in on a little secret that it may be a wee bit misleading. You see, on the album Pleasure the "Boys", Jonny Ragel, Peter Swenson, and Benjamin Rickard, don't simply eat a drum machine, they "eat" some of Portland's best drummers by sampling heavily from Bridgetown Breaks, a compilation of drum recordings that includes performances by Danny Seim of Menomena and Kevin O'Connor of Talkdemonic.

The use of local musicians (or at least samples of local musicians) isn't the only thing that distinguishes Boy Eats Drum Machine from other groups that associate with little electronic boxes that pump out beats; many of the tracks on Pleasure are what could easily be described as quite soulful. Yes, I realize that just because a musician uses samples, drum machines, etc. that they aren't then required to use a computer voice synthesis program, but it's summed up best on the track "The Taste Of Your Mouth" when Ragel declares "I'm just emotional".

While tracks such as "I'm an Angel Telling Lies" and "Sometimes You Wanna Go Where Nobody Knows Your Name" may highlight the emotion present in Ragel's vocals, Pleasure certainly has tracks for those that want to enjoy some great beats and get caught up in the musical layers. –The Philler

Learn…
http://www.boyeatsdrummachine.com/
http://www.myspace.com/boyeatsdrummachine

Listen…
http://www.boyeatsdrummachine.com/music

Look…
http://www.boyeatsdrummachine.com/pics

Please Step Out of the Vehicle
An insane amalgamation of lo-fi orchestral psychedelic pop gems from Portland-based Please Step Out Of The Vehicle, this album takes you through free jazz freakouts, Game Boy outbursts, layered moog synth-based songwriting, and pop anthems that ring through your brain for days. Please Step Out Of The Vehicle are a large band with a textured, triumphant sound that borrows lightly from the best moments of Pavement and the Flaming Lips, squishing together classic psychedelia, video game beeps, folk, summertime pop, and left-leaning lyrical blankets. Sleeping Right And The Best In Homeopathic Magic runs together like an album should, blending song to song and linking lyrical themes. The album is their debut, and a very special one indeed.

Honored in the Top 10 of Willamette Week’s Best New Band 2006 Poll

“Please Step Out of the Vehicle is a big team of Portland kids playing things like flute, glockenspiel, farfisa, and all the standard guitar/bass/drums action ... it has the lazy, crowded, behind-the-beat stoned shuffle of Pavement, some of Beck’s (long-abandoned) junkyard folk, but mostly plays its own game ... upbeat and organic sounding – a great listen when it’s damn cold outside and going out for a drink means gloves, hat, two sweaters, and frozen fucking feet.” The Portland Mercury

“Jonathan Richman and Neutral Milk Hotel getting high together.” Willamette Week

Learn, look, listen…
http://www.myspace.com/pleasestepoutofthevehicle

DJ BJ
The indelible DJ BJ will be spinning the finest dance party cuts til they shut the place down or someone kicks a hole in the speaker.